An asteroid that just flew close to Earth without being detected

A large Boeing 747 asteroid just flew over Earth at a very close distance. It is worth mentioning that the scientists did not discover it until 3 days later.

Sputnik reported on 27 July that astronomers discovered the asteroid last Sunday, three days after it flew across the Earth at a fairly close distance: 123,031km (1/3 of the distance between Earth and Moon).

Picture 1 of An asteroid that just flew close to Earth without being detected
This asteroid flies across the Earth at a fairly close distance: 123,031km - (Photo: daily mail).

Named 2017 001 , this asteroid is estimated to be 78m long (the size of a Boeing 747 passenger plane), three times the meteorite that plunged into our atmosphere in 2013 and exploded in the sky of Chelyabinsk, Russia in 2013 made a series of broken glass doors that injured thousands of people.

Thankfully it flew across the Earth without causing a problem. If a collision occurs, it could cause hundreds of thousands of casualties like the Tunguska explosion in 1908.

According to Sputnik, the Tunguska blast flattened an area of ​​2,150km 2 uninhabited Siberia and emitted 1,000 times the energy of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945.

Astronomers say 2017 001 has a dark, non-reflective surface that cannot be observed with a telescope, so they did not detect it early.

According to CNET, since the beginning of the year, about 10 asteroids have been flying near Earth like 2017 001, most of them have been discovered early.

NASA estimates that they discovered 90% of objects near Earth (NEO) longer than 1km, in addition to the countless smaller NEOs that could still cause great damage to humanity if they hit Earth.